LRI, Jamshedpur, hosted its annual business summit Ensemble 2012 from November 8-10. It was an amalgamation of competition and entertainment that reflected the “learn and play” ambience at XLRI.The summit was inaugurated by E. Abraham, S. J., director, XLRI, and T. Uvari, dean, student affairs, XLRI. Father. Abraham stressed upon the increasing need to go beyond conventions in today’s digital world.

The main events of the first day included War of Wits conducted by Sapphire (a students association for promotion of personnel management, human resources and industrial relations), Circus Maximus, the marketing event conducted by marketing association at XLRI and Van Melle and Helios, the operations event conducted by Axiom (association at XLRI for industrial and operations management).

Other events that saw enthusiastic participation were IR-rational (industrial relations) and Banker’s Dilemma (finance), which involved pitting teams against each other in real world simulations of their domains.

Genesis, an inter B-school event, offered participants an opportunity to present their business plans in front of industry experts and win seed funding for their ventures. In keeping with our institute’s spirit of greater good, the participants were sent to suburban and rural areas to analyse the circumstances and come up with a social business venture.

Idea Summit Conclave, 2012, was held on day two. Premlata Agarwal, the oldest Indian woman to have scaled the world’s tallest peak, the Mount Everest at the age of 48, addressed the audience at the summit instilling confidence in budding mangers.

The events of the day included a finance event called Prometheus, and Strategikon, a consulting event organised by Crux committee. The finals of various events were held on day three. The fest also witnessed a whole gamut of cultural events including culinary events, English and Hindi plays, quiz, literary events, sports, and adventure trips. There were the solo dancing and just-a-minute competitions organised by the dramatics society, Dracula, and a musical performance by the institute’s Bodhi Tree band, followed by an open-air movie screening on the second evening.

Ravi Ramnath HRM, XLRI, Jamshedpur

CALCUTTA

Learning right skills

After getting my first job at ITC Infotech from the Corporate College Connect Programme conducted by Globsyn Skills on October 6, I received a lot of queries about the learning experience at Globsyn Skills.

This programme might particularly interest engineering students looking to join the information technology bandwagon and to others in general.

My time at Globsyn Skills taught me what exactly the IT companies want from fresh graduate engineers beyond theoretical knowledge, and most importantly, how to get an opportunity to get into those IT companies. I got to understand a lot of things from my mentors there.

Initially I was in awe of latest technology and softwares since I graduated from a relatively new college where we never had the privilege to get acquainted with the latest technology and application of software. I finally got to see them at Globsyn Skills and it instilled a lot of confidence in me.

Globsyn Skills not only equipped us with knowledge in technology and software engineering but also helped us to apply our training to practical situations with special emphasis on teamwork, project management, cross-functional networking and effective communication.

The event witnessed overwhelming response from the students across colleges with almost 2000 of them participating. The corporate world was represented by organisations such as ITC Infotech, HCL, Ericsson, Wipro, JSW, Spanco, Patton among a host of other organisations.

Subhomoy Ghosh Dastidar, ex-student, Globsyn Skills

CALCUTTA

Other India

We attended the launch of Beautiful Country-Stories from Another India authored by Gunjan Veda, a well-known journalist and Syeeda Hameed, a member of the Planning Commission recently. In that short time the writers managed to give us a glimpse of an India that is unheard of or unseen in any newspaper or television channel. Gunjan Veda tested our knowledge by asking us a few questions on India pertaining to the book.

Then Syeeda Hameed read out a few excerpts from the book which took us from the arid deserts of Rajasthan and the conflict zone of Kashmir to the flood prone riverine islands of Assam. Hameed left early after the question and answer session. I had asked why the media do not highlight these facets of our country. She reasoned that they are not “Page 3” enough to interest the public. The session made us think if we should only be abreast of how people are going gaga over Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie, instead of bringing to the fore the dark realities that are glossed over when India is projected to the world? After the programme was over, when I bought a copy of the book and skimmed a few pages, I realised that whatever she said was so true.

Gunjan Veda instilled in us an urge to bring positive changes in the society as we grow up to build a better India.